Eternal Bonds
by Royalty Over Reality
Summary: In a world without Ohtori Academy, Touga mysteriously disappears. When Saionji goes looking for him, he discovers that his friend has been harboring a dark secret. When Touga offers Saionji a chance at eternity, will he take it? Yes, of course he will. He's Saionji. Rated T for descriptions of corpses, unhealthy relationship dynamics, and references to Touga's movie backstory.


It had been weeks since Saionji had seen his best friend, Touga. At first, he hadn't been concerned. Touga was his own man, he was allowed to do whatever he wanted to. Saionji would have appreciated it if Touga had given him a warning before cutting off all contact, so that he could find someone else to practice kendo with. However, their friendship didn't mean that Touga owed him any sort of explanation of what he did or why he did it.

However, when Nanami came knocking on Saionji's door asking to stay with his family, he knew something had gone terribly wrong. Nanami would do anything for her older brother. If she was avoiding him, then this wasn't just one of Touga's usual moods. Saionji was particularly concerned when Nanami didn't say anything about Touga, even when he asked her about him. Nanami was never one to keep her thoughts to herself.

Saionji didn't take action immediately. He let his thoughts of what could have been going on fester in his brain for a few days before Nanami went to stay at a friend's house. If this all turned out to be nothing and he ended up embarrassing himself by going over to Touga's house, he wanted to come back home to a quiet household. He wouldn't want to have to deal with Nanami berating him for going over to her house behind her back.

Saionji had hoped waiting for Nanami to leave would give him time to think of something to say. But how could he possibly do that when he didn't even know what was going on in the first place? When he finally forced himself to go visit the Kiryuu family's mansion, he was still just as clueless as he had been when Touga first stopped coming to school a few weeks before.

Touga's castle of a home was so old that it didn't have a doorbell. So, Saionji had to use the ornate, golden knocker to make his presence known. He waited for what felt like a lifetime, before deciding that his friend definitely hadn't heard him. Either that, or he was ignoring him, which was probably the more likely of the two options. Still, Saionji couldn't bring himself to leave without figuring out what was going on. That would have felt too much like a failure. In Saionji's mind, anything failure that was vaguely related to Touga was yet another victory for the other boy. So, he checked to see if the door was unlocked.

Saionji was surprised to find that it actually was. The Kiryuu family was notoriously private. If their door had been left unlocked, that was yet another piece of evidence that something terrible had happened. Saionji, wasn't particularly concerned with that, though. He was too focused on finding out what Touga had been keeping from him. He couldn't see the open door as anything but a challenge. He had to go inside. To do anything else would be giving up. Saionji was painfully aware aware that he had a long list of inadequacies, but his determination was not one of them. He was often many things, but never a quitter.

He made no effort to enter the mansion quietly. In fact, he hoped that the echo of his footsteps would make enough of a racket that his friend would come downstairs and face him. Saionji was in no mood to wander through the halls, trying to find Touga, only for him to end up getting teased and toyed with when he found him.

Unfortunately, he didn't see Touga when he stepped into the foyer. He found something much worse. There were two women lying on the couch, but they weren't asleep. Their necks were stained with dried blood, but aside from that, it didn't look like they had been injured. They smelled terrible though. The acrid stench of death and decay had attracted vermin of all sorts. Flies swarmed the air around the corpses and rats scrambled around on the ground underneath them. Saionji swore that he could even see something moving underneath the skin of one of the bodies.

Saionji wanted to turn around and run away, especially when he saw that both the corpse's faces were painted with expressions of sheer, unadulterated pleasure. It was clear that they hadn't put up a struggle at all, in spite of the gruesome fate they had met. Saionji was no longer worried that Touga was in danger, but that he had become a danger to their entire community.

Saionji didn't think that his friend seemed like the type to murder women for the fun of it. He had never been much of a morally upright person, though. However, it was clear that, if the two women had been murdered, it hadn't been done in a typical fashion. Saionji couldn't help but think that the whole scene looked like something out of a vampire movie.

Maybe it was all just some sort of trick. Touga had convinced the girls to make it look like he had drank their blood, just to get a good laugh out of being able to convince Saionji that he had somehow gotten transformed into a vampire. Nanami was probably in on it too. Any rational person wouldn't have moved into someone else's home for two days just to help their brother pull off a trick on his best, but Nanami was the opposite of a rational person.

Saionji went over to the couch and poked each girl once or twice, to see if he could get them to move. Neither of them did. He stick around long enough to check to see if they had pulses. The stench was too strong for him to do that. If they were only pretending to be dead, they had seriously committed to the act.

They could have always been dummies, though. Saionji took comfort in that thought as he made his way up the creaky, old stairs to Touga's bedroom. When he got there, the door was closed. Saionji opened it without knocking. If Touga was inside, he would have been able to hear Saionji approaching.

When he opened the door, he saw Touga sprawled out on his bed. Saionji couldn't help but take a step back when he saw that the sheets were stained a vibrant crimson red.

"Oh, it's you," Touga said. "I had been expecting Nanami."

"How can you possibly sound so casual right now? You're sitting on a bloodstained bed with two dead women downstairs!" Saionji shouted.

"Ah, yes. I really should dispose of those two," Touga said. "You can't smell it from all the way up here, can you?"

"No! But I smelled more than enough of that stench downstairs!"

"Not very pleasant for you?" Touga asked.

Saionji couldn't believe what he was hearing. Was Touga actually implying that the smell was, in fact, pleasant to him? He really was trying to pull off some sort of vampire trick. However, Saionji was beginning to worry that he had gone a lot further than just enlisting Nanami and a few of his admirers to help him out.

"I don't know if you think that this is funny, but this is too much! Even for you!" Saionji said.

"Does it look like I think this is funny?" Touga asked.

It was only then that Saionji realized Touga hadn't made eye contact with him once since he had walked into the room. He had been looking up at the ceiling the whole time that they had been talking.

"Are you trying to make me feel bad for you?" Saionji asked. "Because it's hard for me to empathize with you when you killed those girls as part of some twisted joke!"

"I'm not trying to fool you," Touga said.

He sat up so that Saionji could see that he was glaring at him.

"So you're delusional then?" Saionji asked. "Because I don't know what you did with those girls, or why you did it, but you can't tell me it doesn't look like something a vampire would do!"

Touga sighed. "If you're going to call the police, just do it. It won't do any good, though. I'll be gone before they get here."

"I'm not going to call the police!"

Saionji was disgusted by how quickly those words tumbled out of his mouth. Still, he couldn't deny that they were true, not even within his own mind. Murderer or not, Touga was still his best friend.

"You're not?" Touga asked. "I'm surprised, Nanami almost did. But only when I offered to turn her."

"You tried to pull this trick on Nanami too? No wonder she ran away from home," Saionji muttered.

"You still think this is a trick?" Touga said, smiling as though there was anything entertaining about the situation that they were in.

"Of course I do!" Saionji said. "Vampires don't exist!"

Suddenly, Touga was no longer sitting on the bed. A cold gust of wind danced across the room and, before Saionji could even blink,Touga was standing behind him.

"They don't, you say?" Touga asked as he brushed Saionji's long, wavy hair away from his neck.

Saionji shrunk back at the feeling of Touga's icy fingers on his skin. He whirled around to see that his best friend looked notably different from when he had last seen him. His skin was as pale as winter snow and his eyes were the same brilliant scarlet color as his hair. The most significant change Saionji noticed was Touga's features. The other boy had always had a reputation throughout town for being good-looking, but this was something else.

He was literally flawless. No matter how hard Saionji looked, there wasn't a single thing that could be criticized about Touga's appearance. There wasn't an oily patch of skin or a single flyaway hair in sight. Even though it had only been a few weeks since he had last seen Touga, he couldn't help but wonder if his features had always looked so perfectly chiseled. Even a vampiric transformation couldn't have completely resculpted his friend's face in so little time.

"This isn't real. You're just trying to trick me," Saionji said.

"I'm flattered that you think that I could pull off something this impressive," Touga said, "But even I couldn't fake something like this."

"How did it happen then? If this is real, than what's your story?" Saionji said.

"Your faith in my honesty is astounding."

"This wouldn't be the first time you lied."

Touga smiled and his gaze wandered from Saionji's eyes to his neck.

"Don't even think about it," Saionji warned him, even though he had no idea what he'd do to defend himself if Touga did try anything.

"I thought you didn't believe me," Touga said.

"I don't. Especially when you won't even tell me how it happened."

"It was my father."

Saionji was surprised that Touga had given him such a direct answer. He wasn't particularly surprised by the insinuation that Touga's father was a vampire, though. Even though Saionji still didn't believe that vampires were real, if anybody was one, it would be Touga's father. There had always been something about that man that had made Saionji's skin crawl, but he had never been able to put his finger on it.

The old fashioned, reclusive man never seemed to leave his house, except to go on business trips to Europe. The trips were always long, typically ranging from a month to a year. Additionally, he simply had a predatory air about him. Saionji had only seen the man a few times over the course of the years that he had known the Kiryuu family. However, every time he spoke with the man, he never had any desire to say much more than hello.

"When I was younger, he promised that he'd let me in on the family secret one day, as long as I behaved myself," Touga said. "I guess that this was it."

"Is he around right now?" Saionji asked.

"No, he had work to do. Somewhere in Germany, I think. Why does it matter?"

"Well, I just think it's awfully convenient that-"

"Stop this. I know that you believe me."

"And what makes you think that?" Saionji asked.

Touga reached out and pressed his hand up against the wall, so that he was leaning over Saionji in a way that made it inconvenient, but not impossible, for Saionji to walk away. It was a move that Touga often used on the girls at school. However, Saionji was the same height as Touga. So, instead of looming over him, Touga had ended up leaning into him.

"I saw the way that you were looking at me earlier," Touga said.

"Are you trying to seduce me?" Saionji asked.

"Not exactly."

Saionji tried to push his friend back, but Touga resisted. Touga dug his feet into the ground and shifted all of his weight into the hand that was pressed against the wall. Saionji pushed against Touga's chest as hard as he could, but no matter how hard he tried, his strength was no longer any match for Touga's.

"Okay, fine. I believe you. You're a vampire," Saionji conceded.

He half expected Touga to break down laughing and pull off a mask, revealing that he was still somehow the same person he always had been. But he didn't. In fact, he didn't even smile, even though he had just won the argument. Had he beaten Saionji so many times that it no longer meant anything to him?

"I am," Touga said.

"And what are you going to do about it?" Saionji asked. "You can't stay in this town. People are going to come looking for those girls soon."

"I know, but..."

"What?"

"I didn't want to leave town alone."

"So you tried to turn Nanami?"

"Yes, but to be fair, she had been bothering me incessantly about it every since she first found out what I had become. It was only once I actually offered to do it that she changed her mind."

"So, what? You were just going to wait around until someone showed up to be your second choice?" Saionji asked, trying in vain to push Touga away once more.

"No, I was waiting for you," Touga said.

"Oh, spare me," Saionji scoffed. "I'm not like those girls downstairs. Lines like that aren't going to work on me."

"What a shame," Touga said. "I was hoping that you would want to come along with me. It's not going to be very much fun seeing the world without my only friend."

"Stop it. I'm not going to leave my life behind for you," Saionji said.

"You're not?" Touga asked.

"Of course not! Did you really expect me to drop me to drop everything, just because you told me to?"

"No, but I did think that you might want this," Touga said.

He pulled his hair back to reveal a crescent moon shaped bite on his neck.

"What, to be like you?" Saionji asked.

"Yes, exactly," Touga said. "I know that the two of us have always had a bit of a rivalry going on, ever since we were young. I guess that it was silly of me to think that you would want something like that to last forever."

"Why are you going on about all of this?" Saionji said. "Weren't you the one who told me that there was no such thing as an eternal friendship?"

"That's before I got a hold of eternity," Touga said. "Now, I have to hope."

"You don't mean it," Saionji said. "You can't mean it."

"Maybe not. But if I'm being honest, I don't want to end up alone forever. And I'm worried that you're the only one who would ever want to stick around for so long."

"So, that's it? You want to turn me into a vampire because you think I'm desperate. That I won't get tired of you and throw you out like everybody else does? Because if I was you, I would just keep doing exactly what you always do. Meet somebody, make them care about you, and then run away before they can get bored of you. Leave them to wonder what they did wrong. Why they're never good enough! Why they're always two steps behind you, no matter what they do!"

"Is this you finally admitting defeat?" Touga asked. "I never thought I'd see the day."

"No! Never!" Saionji's anger came out sounding excruciatingly close to desperation.

How could Touga, his so called best friend, treat him like this? He must have known that he was dangling the one thing that Saionji wanted more than anything else in front of his nose like it was nothing. How could he act like forever was just an inconsequential favor that someone could just do for whoever they wanted to. It was supposed to be special. Why couldn't Touga just realize that?

"Then what are you going to do?" Touga asked.

"You know that I can't do it myself," Saionji muttered.

He locked his gaze on the doorway, refusing to give Touga the satisfaction of being able to see the look in his eyes as he admitted his own powerless.

As he waited expectantly for Touga to respond, Saionji was overwhelmed by the chill of ice cold lips on his neck. He braced himself for the pain of fangs penetrating his skin, but it didn't come. Touga was kissing his neck, and he didn't like the way that his body was reacting to it. Saionji should've been repulsed by what his friend was doing, but the only thing that was making him feel disgusted was the fact that every hair on his body was standing on end.

"What on earth are you doing?" Saionji sputtered. He sounded even more flustered than he had feared that he would.

"Sorry, force of habit," Touga said.

He was acting like he had accidentally stepped on Saionji's toe, not kissed his neck with such a strategic passion that it couldn't have been unintentional. No one could have accidentally launched such a successful attack on someone else's defenses by mistake.

"Are you going to do it or not?" Saionji asked.

"Eventually," Touga said. "I was trying to get you prepared for it. It's going to hurt, no matter what I do. But from what I've observed, it seems to hurt less if you get in the mood for it first."

"I'm not going to stand around waiting any longer! Just do it."


End file.
